Saturday, October 05, 2013

From The Australian, 5 Oct 2013, by Ben McIntyre (The Times):...Antonis Samaras, the beleaguered conservative Prime Minister of Greece, has [compared Greece to Germany in the chaotic period that led to the rise of Hitler:]"Greek democracy stands before what is perhaps its greatest challenge...[with social cohesion] endangered by rising unemployment, just as it was towards the end of the Weimar Republic in Germany."
A year after Samaris drew this dramatic analogy, the Greek state has moved to combat the most obvious manifestation of that challenge, by arresting the head of the neo-fascist Golden Dawn party and several of his followers, and charging them with criminal conspiracy after the murder of a young anti-racist hip-hop star.
Modern comparisons with Nazi Germany are tempting, familiar and frequently simplistic. When Syria used chemical weapons on its own people, John Kerry lost no time in comparing Bashar Assad to Adolf Hitler, insisting "this is our Munich moment". Saddam Hussein, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Slobodan Milosevic: all have been awarded the Hitler label, convenient shorthand for "nasty".
Greece is not in the grip of hyper-inflation, moderate politics has not been abandoned, Golden Dawn has not achieved the meteoric rise of the National Socialists in 1932, and Nikos Michaloliakos is not Hitler (although he keeps a portrait of the Fuhrer in his home). A pudgy, grey-haired, 56-year-old mathematician, he is a boilerplate bigot with zero charisma.
Yet the echoes of Weimar grow louder: this week Michaloliakos was charged in court, while his followers chanted: "Blood, honour, Golden Dawn", an adapted Nazi slogan, and vowed, in traditional fascist style: "You will only stop us with bullets."Many of the factors that pulled apart the Weimar Republic are present in Greece: mass unemployment, political paralysis, spreading poverty, social unrest, rising crime and rampant corruption, suffused with an acute sense of national humiliation.
Austerity measures imposed to pay off Greece's crushing debts are seen by many Greeks in the same way that Germans viewed reparations imposed by the Treaty of Versailles, a brutal degradation enforced by international bankers, a disgrace, a stab in the back.
No one is yet wheeling around barrow-loads of worthless currency to buy bread, but with middle-class Athenians reduced to rooting through dustbins, living standards plummeting and political violence growing, radicalism is on the rise. As in Weimar Germany, the racist anti-immigrant Right in Greece has seized on the chaos with extraordinary effectiveness.
In 1928 the Nazis were a splinter group with only 2.7 per cent of the vote. In 2009 Golden Dawn seemed even more irrelevant, with support hovering around 0.2 per cent. In last year's elections, campaigning on the slogan "We can rid this land of filth", it garnered nearly half a million votes, in a population of 11 million, winning 18 seats in the Hellenic parliament. That may be fraction of the 37 per cent won by Hitler in 1932, but is still a grim reflection of the speed at which economic dislocation can poison politics. Unemployment was 30 per cent when Hitler took power; in Greece it is near that, with more than 50 per cent youth unemployment.
Golden Dawn rejects the neo-Nazi label, while revelling in Nazi imagery, including a black, white and red flag and an emblem unmistakably close to a swastika. Its methods mimic those of the Brownshirts, attacking immigrants, parading in paramilitary dress and shutting down theatrical productions it considers immoral.
As in Weimar Germany, Greek right-wing extremists have found support in the police and military. According to some surveys nearly half the Greek police support Golden Dawn. Last month a message posted on the Special Forces Reserve Union website called for an interim government "under military guarantee" - in other words, a coup.
But if Greece offers disturbing parallels with Weimar Germany, the analogy might also offer a way to combat the rise of fascism. In his biography of Hitler, Ian Kershaw writes that the Nazi rise to power came about, in large part, because of the "blatant disregard by Germany's power elites for safeguarding democracy". Centrist parties believed they could control and co-opt the extremists, and were destroyed by them.
As Golden Dawn has grown in power, there have been signs that some on the moderate right might be willing to make a deal with them. At the same time, the State appeared to turn a blind eye to the rising tide of violence by Golden Dawn supporters against immigrants, ethnic minorities and political opponents.
Finally, the Government has acted, investigating infiltration of the police and arresting Golden Dawn MPs and other supporters. Rather than trying to ban the party, the Government is charging extremists with membership of a violent criminal group.
Michaloliakos is the first elected party chief to be held in jail since the end of military rule in Greece, and his arrest has substantially raised the political stakes. If the prosecution can demonstrate a direct connection between Golden Dawn and the murder of the rapper Pavlos Fyssas, that might destroy the party by exposing it as a genuinely subversive and criminal organisation. Proving criminal conspiracy would enable party funding to be cut off and the ejection of convicted MPs.
But if Michaloliakos wriggles free, or escapes with only minor punishment, then there is another deeply disturbing historical precedent.
The trial of Hitler in 1924, after the failed Beer Hall putsch, was intended to destroy Nazism and had precisely the opposite effect, providing the party with national publicity and an ideal propaganda platform. Hitler emerged from prison after nine months, having written Mein Kampf, a martyr in many eyes.
A successful prosecution of Golden Dawn would safeguard Greek democracy; a failed one would imperil it still more gravely. Michaloliakos will not be sitting idle in prison: if history is any guide, he will be writing an account of His Struggle.

Israel is negotiating an unlikely diplomatic alliance with several Gulf and Arab states, including Saudi Arabia, to tackle Iran's nuclear programme...

High-profile Israeli and Gulf diplomats held a series of meetings overseen by Benjamin Netanyahu in the weeks leading to his speech to the UN General Assembly, Israel's Channel 2 reported.
Channel 2 said a "high ranking official" even came secretly to Israel to address growing concerns on Tehran's nuclear program, following US President Barack Obama's decision to open a dialogue with his Iranian counterpart Hassan Rohani.
Israel officially has no diplomatic relations with Saudi Arabia and any of the Arab states in the Gulf.
"The dangers of a nuclear-armed Iran and the emergence of other threats in our region have led many of our Arab neighbours to recognize, finally recognize, that Israel is not their enemy," Netanyahu told the UN this week.
"And this affords us the opportunity to overcome the historic animosities and build new relationships, new friendships, new hopes.
"Israel welcomes engagement with the wider Arab world. We hope that our common interests and common challenges will help us forge a more peaceful future," Netanyahu added.The rise of sectarian tensions between Sunni and Shiite Muslims across the Middle East has worsened diplomatic relations between Iran and Saudi Arabia.
The two countries sits on the opposite sides of the Syrian civil war, Saudia Arabia backing Sunni rebel groups and Tehran supporting the regime of Bashar al-Assad.
Saudi Arabia and other Sunni countries, such as Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates have also been vocal opponents of Iran's nuclear program.
..."I wish I could believe Rouhani, but I don't because facts are stubborn things, and the facts are that Iran's savage record flatly contradicts Rouhani's soothing rhetoric," Netanyahu told the UN."Israel will never acquiesce to nuclear arms in the hands of a rogue regime that repeatedly promises to wipe us off the map. Against such a threat, Israel will have no choice but to defend itself," he said. "I want there to be no confusion on this point. Israel will not allow Iran to get nuclear weapons. If Israel is forced to stand alone, Israel will stand alone."

The US and Israel are discussing what steps Iran could take that would be “verifiable and meaningful” and indicate that it is indeed stopping its nuclear program...

Netanyahu in a 45-minute interview with PBS/CBS interviewer Charlie Rose (one of 8 he's given since his UN speech)

The prime minister praised Obama for saying publicly and privately that steps and transparent actions, not just words, were needed from Iran.
“What we’re talking about right now,” he said, was “what are the meaningful actions that will do the job.”
... Netanyahu ...slammed Iranian President Hassan Rouhani and vowed that Israel would take action alone, if necessary, to stop Iran from getting nuclear weapons.
... Netanyahu said that what he was saying to the world was to “keep up the pressure and for God’s sake don’t let them have nuclear weapons.”
He said this was “not only for us, but also for the Americans, Europeans, Arabs and – you know what I am adding here – you the people of Iran, you the Persians. You don’t want them to have nuclear weapons, because you will never get rid of this tyranny if it is armed with nuclear weapons.”
...he believed the US and Israel, working together, could get to a common policy and that the American position was not yet “crystallized.”
The prime minister said there had been no confrontation with Obama and that Israel did not object to testing the diplomatic route.
“The question is, what is a deal that does it?” he said.Netanyahu made clear that at this point his biggest concern was that the talks could lead to a partial deal providing Iran with sanctions relief in return for minor concessions that would not materially hurt its nuclear infrastructure.The prime minister quoted US Secretary of State John Kerry as saying that a bad deal on Iran would be worse than no deal. “And I guess my point is that a partial deal is a bad deal. Because when you lift the sanctions for some minor stuff that they do, or partial thing that they do, it takes years to put the sanctions in place.”According to Netanyahu, there are “a lot of countries who are just waiting to lift the sanctions,” something that could make the whole sanctions regime collapse.He said the last thing Israel, the US or some “significant European countries” were interested in was to “let Iran wiggle away with a smile campaign.”The prime minister, obviously intent on framing the Iranian issue as an American problem as much as an Israeli one, stressed on two occasions that Tehran was developing intercontinental ballistic missiles to hit the US, since it already had the missile capacity to strike Israel.
Regarding where Iran stands in the development of its nuclear program, Netanyahu explained that the Iranians were close to a point where they would have enough enriched uranium at lower levels “to be able to punch through and enrich it very rapidly within a matter of weeks to get high enriched uranium that could be used for a bomb.”
He took issue with the oftheard argument that Iran had a “natural right to enrich uranium,” by saying that countries do not need to enrich uranium – something needed for a military program – to harness nuclear power for civilian needs. Seventeen countries, including Canada and Mexico, had civilian nuclear energy without enriching uranium, he said.Netanyahu likened Iran, which he said was controlled by a “cult,” to a suicide bomber. “We’ve had a lot of them,” he explained. “The suicide bomber, as he’s driving on the way to board the bus, he obeys the traffic laws, he says the right things. Once he gets on the bus, bam.”Regarding peace negotiations with the Palestinians, Netanyahu said that while it was true that Jews had preceded them in the area by “thousands of years,” it was “true also that they’re here.”
The crux of the negotiations from Israel’s point of view, he explained, was to create a situation where Israel did not get the worst of all worlds: to leave land that is both strategically important and the Jewish people’s historical cradle, and also to “get Iran.”Effectively, he said, when Israel left Lebanon and Gaza it received Iranian proxies in return.“We cannot have it happen a third time,” he said. “So we have to have a different arrangement. And that arrangement will mean that Israel will have to have a long-term military presence along the Jordan River to prevent this area, this Palestinian state, from being perforated by Iranian agents from Jordan.”

Thursday, October 03, 2013

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY: The Israeli military victory in 1973 was marred by pain over the nation’s casualties and disappointment with the country’s leadership.

Jerusalem learned that it needs close strategic coordination with Washington, while Israel’s Arab enemies learned that they cannot destroy it by force. Forty years after the 1973 war, Israel prospers, and the power differential between Israel and its neighbors has greatly widened. Moreover, Israeli society possesses the social resilience necessary to meet the challenges of continuous conflict.
The 1973 war was an Israeli military victory: the IDF demonstrated a rare ability to overcome a surprise attack on two fronts and ended up 100 kilometers from Cairo, deep into Egypt, and within artillery range of Damascus. Yet, the remarkable military victory was marred by the acute pain over the many casualties and the disappointment with the political and military leadership.
As the war ended, Israeli society lost its naiveté and began a process of political maturation. Greater healthy skepticism toward state institutions and the IDF developed within the media and public opinion. The war’s misfortunes also created a political atmosphere that led to greater political pluralism, propelling the Likud into a ruling position. Over time, the conservative instincts of a changing electorate left the Likud as the main political force in the arena...
In terms of international politics, the war left Israel vulnerable to attempts to isolate it in the international arena, particularly since the Arabs effectively used the oil weapon. Many states severed relations with Israel, and the UN General Assembly adopted the infamous resolution that equated Zionism to racism. This resolution has since been rescinded and Israel is hardly isolated in the international arena; it is viewed as a successful state with which many countries seek to establish bilateral ties.
The 1973 war also underscored the dependency of a small state such as Israel on its superpower patron. Whatever dreams of self-sufficiency in weapon development and production were entertained in Israel before the war were soon abandoned. Jerusalem learned that it needs close strategic coordination with Washington to secure the capability to act forcefully, as well as freedom of action. This was a crucial corrective to the pre-war hubris that introduced much caution to Israel’s foreign policy.One important factor that led to the IDF recuperation after the initial surprise of the war was the fact that the fighting started at defensible borders and not in proximity to Israel’s heartland. The “1967 borders” could have hardly allowed the IDF to regroup and go for a counter-attack. This is an important lesson for the future that seems to have been internalized by a significant part of Israel’s decision-makers.
The deliberations about the reasons for the initial 1973 surprise and the resulting military debacle indicated a clear need for expanding the circles that engage in the study of national security issues. This has led to a more pluralist intelligence establishment, although the IDF still plays a major role in supplying national estimates. Moreover, the IDF and other government agencies have gradually opened up, though not enough, to inputs from outsiders. Think tanks, such as the Institute for National Security Studies at Tel Aviv University and the Begin-Sadat Center (BESA) for Strategic Studies at Bar-Ilan University, have become participants in the national security debates and have offered alternatives to governmental policies. Nevertheless, strategic surprises may happen, which means that Israel still has to prepare itself for worst-case scenarios and should not succumb to rosy wishful thinking.
In historical terms, the 1973 victory taught the Arab leaders that even under most auspicious conditions they cannot eradicate the Jewish State by force. While Israel failed to hold on to the position that changes in the territorial status quo require peace agreements, and instead accepted interim agreements, the military outcome of this war brought about the change in Egypt, the largest and most important Arab state that eventually decided to make peace with Israel. The war was the last attempt by Arab armies to invade Israel. Gradually, for a variety of reasons, the likelihood of a large-scale war was drastically reduced. Today, the Arab world is in disarray as result of a colossal socio-economic and political crisis. The Arab predicament makes the possibility of a large-scale war even more distant.
Though terrorism against Israel has the potential to be on the rise, in the near future it carries lower risks than large-scale conventional encounters. Israel was successful in containing terrorist organizations. State-supported terrorist groups could be much more dangerous, but such a problem is with the states rather than the terrorists.
Forty years after the 1973 Yom Kippur War, when the fear of losing the “Third Temple” was voiced, Israel prospers and the power differential with its neighbors has greatly widened. Its society displays significant social resilience and readiness to meet the challenges of continuous conflict. This is critically important, since the old calls to destroy the Jewish state continue unabated, and one fanatic foe, Iran, is assiduously working to acquire WMD capabilities.

*Prof. Efraim Inbar, director of the Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies, is a professor of political studies at Bar-Ilan University and a fellow at the Middle East Forum. He will visit Australia in October.

"...And I will bring back the captivity of My people Israel,and they will build the waste cities, and inhabit them; and they will plant vineyards and drink their wine; they will also make gardens, and eat the fruit of them. And I will plant them upon their land, and they will never be uprooted ..."

...Intensive talks with leading figures taking place over recent weeks, amid concern that Tehran will dupe Washington

Israel has held a series of meetings with prominent figures from a number of Gulf and other Arab states in recent weeks in an attempt to muster a new alliance capable of blocking Iran’s drive toward nuclear weapons, Israel’s Channel 2 reported Wednesday.

Israel has held a series of meetings with prominent figures from a number of Gulf and other Arab states in recent weeks in an attempt to muster a new alliance capable of blocking Iran’s drive toward nuclear weapons, Israel’s Channel 2 reported Wednesday.

According to the report, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has been supervising a series of “intensive meetings” with representatives of these other countries. One “high ranking official” even came on a secret visit to Israel, the report said.

The report came a day after Netanyahu, in an overlooked passage of his UN speech, noted that shared concerns over Iran’s nuclear program “have led many of our Arab neighbors to recognize… that Israel is not their enemy” and created an opportunity to “build new relationships.”

The Arab and Gulf states involved in the new talks have no diplomatic ties with Jerusalem, the report noted. What they share with Israel, it said, is the concern that President Hasan Rouhani’s new diplomatic outreach will fool the US and lead to a US-Iran diplomatic agreement which provides for “less than the dismantling of the Iranian nuclear program.”

“There is a deep sense of anxiety concerning what’s happening in Iran,” Israeli Ambassador to the UN Ron Prosor told Channel 2 Wednesday. While he avoided comment on any direct contact between Israel and the Gulf states, he said there were messages “from all over the region” being transmitted to the highest ranks of the US government.

Likud MK Tzachi Hanegbi, who is close to Netanyahu, indicated to the Times of Israel after the prime minister’s speech to the General Assembly on Tuesday that Israel was no longer certain that the Obama administration would use force against Iran even in a last resort to stop[ it attaining nuclear weapons.

...On Tuesday Netanyahu made it clear that “Israel will not allow Iran to get nuclear weapons” and could take military action to stop it from doing so. ”If Israel is forced to stand alone, Israel will stand alone. Yet, in standing alone, Israel will know that we will be defending many, many others,” he stated.

He immediately added: “The dangers of a nuclear-armed Iran and the emergence of other threats in our region have led many of our Arab neighbors to recognize, finally recognize, that Israel is not their enemy. And this affords us the opportunity to overcome the historic animosities and build new relationships, new friendships, new hopes.”

He went on: “Israel welcomes engagement with the wider Arab world. We hope that our common interests and common challenges will help us forge a more peaceful future.”

A number of Sunni countries, such as Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates, have been vocally opposed to Iran’s nuclear program, placing them and Israel on the same side of the debate.... ,

Monday, September 30, 2013

...the total number of deaths in conflicts since 1950 ...about 85,000,000.

...the deaths in the Arab-Israeli conflict since 1950 include 32,000 deaths due to Arab state attacks and 19,000 due to Palestinian attacks, or 51,000 in all. Arabs make up roughly 35,000 of these dead and Jewish Israelis make up 16,000.... deaths in Arab-Israeli fighting since 1950 amount to just 0.06 percent of the total number of deaths in all conflicts in that period...1 out of about 1,700 persons killed in conflicts since 1950 has died due to Arab-Israeli fighting....11,000,000 Muslims have been violently killed since 1948, of which 35,000, or 0.3 percent, died during the sixty years of fighting Israel, or just 1 out of every 315 Muslim fatalities. In contrast, over 90 percent of the 11 million who perished were killed by fellow Muslims.

The Arab-Israeli conflict is often said, not just by extremists, to be the world's most dangerous conflict – and, accordingly, Israel is judged the world's most belligerent country.
For example, British prime minister Tony Blair told the U.S. Congress in July 2003 that "Terrorism will not be defeated without peace in the Middle East between Israel and Palestine. Here it is that the poison is incubated. Here it is that the extremist is able to confuse in the mind of a frighteningly large number of people the case for a Palestinian state and the destruction of Israel." This viewpoint leads many Europeans, among others, to see Israel as the most menacing country on earth.
But is this true? It flies in the face of the well-known pattern that liberal democracies do not aggress; plus, it assumes, wrongly, that the Arab-Israeli conflict is among the most costly in terms of lives lost.
To place the Arab-Israeli fatalities in their proper context, one of the two co-authors, Gunnar Heinsohn, has compiled statistics to rank conflicts since 1950 by the number of human deaths incurred. Note how far down the list is the entry in bold type.

Conflicts since 1950 with over 10,000 Fatalities (all figures rounded)*

This grisly inventory finds the total number of deaths in conflicts since 1950 numbering about 85,000,000. Of that sum, the deaths in the Arab-Israeli conflict since 1950 include 32,000 deaths due to Arab state attacks and 19,000 due to Palestinian attacks, or 51,000 in all. Arabs make up roughly 35,000 of these dead and Jewish Israelis make up 16,000.

These figures mean that deaths in Arab-Israeli fighting since 1950 amount to just 0.06 percent of the total number of deaths in all conflicts in that period. More graphically, only 1 out of about 1,700 persons killed in conflicts since 1950 has died due to Arab-Israeli fighting.
(Adding the 11,000 killed in the Israeli war of independence, 1947-49, made up of 5,000 Arabs and 6,000 Israeli Jews, does not significantly alter these figures.)
In a different perspective, some 11,000,000 Muslims have been violently killed since 1948, of which 35,000, or 0.3 percent, died during the sixty years of fighting Israel, or just 1 out of every 315 Muslim fatalities. In contrast, over 90 percent of the 11 million who perished were killed by fellow Muslims.Comments:
(1) Despite the relative non-lethality of the Arab-Israeli conflict, its renown, notoriety, complexity, and diplomatic centrality will probably give it continued out-sized importance in the global imagination. And Israel's reputation will continue to pay the price.
(2) Still, it helps to point out the 1-in-1,700 statistic as a corrective, in the hope that one day, this reality will register, permitting the Arab-Israeli conflict to subside to its rightful, lesser place in world politics.

Professor Heinsohn is director of the Raphael-Lemkin-Institut für Xenophobie- und Genozidforschung at the University of Bremen. Mr. Pipes is director of the Middle East Forum.

Apr. 9, 2013 update: Congruent with these numbers, the ASDA'A Burson-Marsteller Arab Youth Survey 2013, titled Our Best Days Are Ahead of Us, finds that the Arab-Israeli conflict rates as concern #4 in the minds of young Arabic-speakers.

The poll was conducted by Penn Schoen Berland with 3,000 face-to-face interviews between December 2012 and January 2013 with Arab men and women aged 18 to 24 in the six Gulf Cooperation Council states (Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the UAE), Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, Libya, Iraq and Tunisia, Algeria, Morocco, and Yemen. The gender split of the survey is 60:40 male to female. The margin of error is +/-2.19%.

A long-ruling tyrant (Ali Khamene'i, Bashar al-Assad,) is reaching out to the West.

Those tyrants are furiously signaling an apparent reform (a smiling Hassan Rouhani, Assad acknowledging his chemical weapons and agreeing to turn them over).

"Who us, WMD?" they ask. "No interest at all in them."

Supreme Leader Ali Khamene'i (left) with President Hassan Rouhani.

Let's not forget who's in charge in Tehran.

Count me skeptical.

In part, I've learned over the decades that pessimism is good for one's career as a Middle East analyst. In part, both the Iranian and Syrian governments have shown such dedication to their WMD buildups that it's nearly inconceivable either will voluntarily undo them.

I just hope that the U.S. and other governments don't fall prey to manipulations and delays.

Given the occupant in the White House, however, that seems like a very probable outcome, especially in the Iranian case.

From JCPA, Vol. 13, No. 26, 24 September 2013:
With Iranian President Rouhani speaking at the UN in New York, it is useful to see the messages coming out of Tehran from an annual military parade held on Sept. 22, 2013. Significantly, Rouhani attended the parade, reviewed the forces and spoke as well. He was accompanied by the heads of the Iranian armed forces. Seated to his right was Iranian Chief of Staff, Major General Hassan Firouzabadi, and to his left was the Commander of the Revolutionary Guards, General Mohammad-Ali Jafari (see photo).

Here is a display of Iranian messages that were featured during the Tehran military parade. While in English the Iranians wrote “Down with America,” in Persian and Arabic, the Iranians wrote, “Death to America.”

The parade included a line of missile transports carrying Shahab-3 missiles, which have a 1,300-kilometer range that can reach both Israel and American bases in the Persian Gulf. The lead vehicle has a poster in the front which says: “America Is Not as Powerful as It Claims to Be.” Thus, on the eve of his visit to the UN, Rouhani took part in a major national event which contradicted the themes he has been stressing during his charm offensive in New York.

Finally, under Rouhani’s presidency, Iran’s military parade contained a blatant statement calling for Israel’s destruction. On the lead vehicle of a line of trucks transporting Shahab-3 missiles, there appears a banner that reads: “Esraail baayad az beyn beravad” – “Israel Should Cease to Exist.” Iran’s apologists will no doubt say that the sentence is in the passive voice, so it is not clear how it ceases to exist. But the very fact that the Iranians attach a sign of this sort to a vehicle carrying Shahab-3 missiles means that Tehran itself is juxtaposing its intention to destroy Israel with the military means to carry it out.
Reports by the International Atomic Energy Agency last year, especially in May 2012, contained information that Iran was seeking to remove the conventional warhead from a Shahab-3 missile and replace it with a spherical nuclear device.

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